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Let people know what poker blogs you read every day by creating your own widget. It also allows you to collect all of your own poker blog headlines if you use several blogging platforms. This is a simple trick for those who write a few poker blogs at a time and would like to add a simple widget to their sites with the latest headlines. The widget can be created by using Google Reader service.

Such a widget can be added to Blogspot or any other blogging service which allows custom HTML/script codes. Some of Wordpress-based blog services do not support it, so you may not be able to add the widget. The Wordpress.com platform is one of them.

There are two kinds of widgets:

Displaying all posts from all of the blogs that one has subscribed to in a set category (you can add even 1 blog subscription per category if you want). For example, I have subscribed to PokerStars Blog, Tao of Poker and all the my.PokerNews.com blogs. I set a category (it is called a label or a folder in Google Reader) and called it “Best Poker Blogs”. The widget will display posts from these 3 blogs.

Displaying only selected posts from subscribed blogs. The widget displays only the posts that one wants to share by marking them at the bottom of each post.

Which poker pro is your favorite? Phil Ivey or Chris “Jesus” Ferguson? They are both TOP level pros and definitely have something to say about their travels, tournaments they play in, their videos and lots of other interesting stuff a poker pro does every day. And although they both have their official blogs, they do not blog regularly. Actually only a few of the top level poker players update their blogs often and write about the things that are interesting to their fans.

We have already presented the TOP 10 General Poker Blogs and Top 10 Poker brand blogs. Now it is time to check which poker pros write their own blogs and which ones are actually good at it.

One of the latest web 2.0 trends is content aggregators. They select some particular online resources and expose their RSS information sorted by particular topics. In other words, you can see the best RSS feeds from trustworthy news sources and blogs about jobs, cars, fashion, music, even Lady Gaga and of course poker and gambling. The online resources are selected by editors, therefore no useless information gets through.

Content aggregators help high quality blogs and websites distribute their content (mainly news and blogs). Some of the aggregators are SEO friendly, so staying there longer can impact the search engine results as they usually have quite good Google positions. Traffic details may also indicate good quality, as feeds are usually displayed in the related information page (not like StumbleUpon with its accidental traffic).

Do you still have doubts on where to start your poker blog? This article will introduce you to some of the most popular poker blogging platforms. In my first Poker Blog Engines article I have started analyzing poker social networks and blogging engines built exclusively for writing poker blogs. The rating system was based on 10 key points and their evaluation in a 5 grade scale. To remain objective and righteous I shall continue with the same 10 principles:

Visibility to the non-members of the blogging platform

The editing of the text + embedding external media (YouTube or any other video, flash replayer etc.) options

Tools to customize the design and the looks of the blog

Possibility to manage the URI (the ending of the link) of a single blog post

If you are a poker player and would like to start your own blog to share your experience and views about the poker world, you'll have to decide on the essential issue – whether to use a general blogging platform such as Wordpress, Blogger.com, Tumblr.com, or a poker community blogging engine. Those who have decided to go with Wordpress or Blogger, please read this article just to make sure you know what you're missing and is it worth it.

The internet trends of recent years are going WEB 2.0. What is WEB 2.0? You can read about it in Wikipedia or you may follow this article where I will try to explain it in my own words. WEB 2.0 is the part of internet content submitted by ordinary people rather than paid journalists, public relations agents, copywriters or scholars. People submit such information as comments, Tweets, pictures, videos, PowerPoint presentations, their own writings in PDF format, blogs, diaries, interesting links that they share etc. Web 2.0 is not only about creating information. It is also about delivering it to the reader's eyes. People may now access information not only from search engines, but also from RSS feeds, Email subscriptions, Twitter followers and friends who share their links on Delicious or Digg. People can receive information and spread it to others using badges (Twitter badge, Flickr recent photos badge etc.) and applications in various social networks. Facebook, mySpace, LinkedIn are the perfect places for sharing the information created in Blogger, Wordpress or found via Delicious, Mixx, Yahoo! Buzz, Digg etc.

This blog is named Poker 2.0. Why? I am going to write about social networks and poker, because people submit so much unique information about their passion - hand transcripts, screenshots of their winings at the online poker rooms, bad beats, photos from their home games, mobile photos and videos from poker tournaments (some of them can be illegal and shot from the sleeve). There are so many poker pros who share their experience in blogs or videoblogs. Some of them have even launched a webTV or a series of coaching videos. The internet is full of dramatic poker videos from live tournaments and funny collages of the most popular poker players. This variety of information is scattered around so I will try to collect the most interesting pieces.